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Category Archives: 4-travelogue

Wiki Marathon

For week I would like you to work on the wiki and make sure the structure and content of the wiki together with your contribution pages reflects the hard personal and collective work you’ve been doing. I want you guys to do more work earlier and not wait for the last moment on this as collaboration is hard and the process should be given some time to take shape and materialize. Please make sure you make most of your contributions by Saturday and devote Sunday-Tuesday to edit, structure and further substantiate the collective work of the class.

Next week’s reading will focus on the potential (?) of Postnationalism presented by the networked public sphere and on the digital divide through the case study of the OLPC.

Required Reading:

Nicolas Negroponte, “Interview with Riz Khan” Al-Jazeera October 2007 (by the way, Riz’s show is recommended in general)

I apologize for this conclusion, the format AND the lateness – I had planned a video with images and swooshy lettering and such, but the tech gods were not smiling on me this time round. hence a podcast summarizing what I’ve gathered from talking to and gathering info from various people in the technology and education field, trying to get at what they think is the most pressing problem in education right now…

In this travelogue, I’ve explored ways the internet-facilitated humor builds communities and draws people together across boundaries they might not usually cross. I’ve showed ways in which internet humor is invading the offline world. And I’ve also discussed networked features of humor on the internet (multidirectional communication, informality, chatter, and lingering distribution).

But I still haven’t answered the big question: “is the internet making us funnier?”.

Well?

If we’re only talking about quantity and speed, then sure. Online, we can easily create and share humor, and we can do it really really quickly!

But qualitatively funnier? In the real world? Maybe I could begin to answer this question if I had hours and months and years to do a content analysis of sitcoms or movies or standup comedy or books over the decades.

But honestly, I think the answer is no. When it comes down to it, people are still making the same kind of jokes, they’re just finding new ways to share and comment upon them. I think this video from the Library of Congress makes my point.

Guys! People have been messing with cats since at least the 1880s! Which is when this video was made. Seriously.

I’d also like to mention: while there’s a ton of stuff that’s funny out there on the internet, there’s a lot of content that really, really isn’t. In some simplistic way, wouldn’t funny and unfunny create a counterbalance to one another?

Anyway, in an effort to create make something funnier, by building upon something that’s already out there, and then distribute it far and wide using, check out this hilarious video uploaded onto youtube, a source of networked comedy!

This is a short follow-up to my previous podcast on monetizing internet TV. Unfortunately, my headset microphone decided not to work and I had to use the phone, so I will re-record, and try to incorporate your content feedback into my second attempt…